Friday, 7 March 2014

Jesus at the Check Post.

Recently, we have been hearing repeated messages that Jesus
was a Palestinian.

It is bad enough when devious Arab Islamic leaders,
including Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority,
quoted Jesus at Christmas time as “a Palestinian messenger,” but it is
something completely different when churches leaders call Jesus a Palestinian.

They know its lie, and yet they subscribe to this mantra. It
leads one to question why they do it. Why do they go out of their way to deny
the undeniable Jewishness of Jesus according to their own biblical
commentaries? There can only be one inevitable conclusion. It’s anti-Semitism.

It was anti-Semitism that fed the brutal dogma that expelled
and killed millions of Jews as European Christianity pursued Jews around the
globe. It was anti-Semitism at the heart of replacement theology that
positioned God as having abandoned His Covenant to the Jewish people in favor
of Christians. It is anti-Semitism that drives Christian leaders to abandon the
Old Testament narration of a return to Zion of the Jewish people in favor of
promoting the notorious Kairos Palestine Document. This document positions
Palestinian Arabs as Jesus-figures deprived of their land, and Israelis as the
Christ-killers. This blood libel is alive and well. It has shaken off the
Christian shame of the Shoah, and found its voice in anti-Zionism.

Deconstructing the history of
the Land of Israel in order to deny Jewish sovereignty is central to
Palestinian policy. This narrative has been adopted by many Christians who have
found a moral hook on which to hang their anti-Semitism, namely the
transfiguration of who are the violent and devious actors and who are the
victims. Clearly, they have repositioned Israelis and Jews as the oppressors,
and a Palestinian society, despite it being one that has been incited and bent
on racial hatred, violence, and terror, as the innocent victims.

It is truly appalling how
cynically deceptive some Christian leaders can be. They come up with causes
that elicit emotional, but false, messages. Take “Jesus at the Check Post,” for
example. This is the name of a conference taking place in Bethlehem this month.
Christians will try to portray Jesus as a Palestinian suffering at an Israeli
check post. The poster of the event,
from March 10-14, is headed by a drawing depicting an Arab farmer and a church
locked behind a huge grey concrete wall. In
support of the Palestinian narrative it carried the message “Your Kingdom Come!”

It is easy to flippantly answer the posed
question of a Jesus at a check post by reminding them that Israeli soldiers
would remind him, as a Jew, that no Jew is allowed to live in a Bethlehem under
Palestinian control, and his life would be in grave danger in a place that has
become so radically Islamic that even the Christians have fled this once
Christian town. Elias Freij, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem at the time of
the town’s handover by Israel to Arafat’s PLO, correctly prophesized that Bethlehem
would be a town of churches but no Christians.

Participants that this event
should be reminded that Israeli security forces arrested fourteen members of
Islamic Jihad based in Bethlehem last Christmas. During their search, they
found weapons and explosives in the houses of the Bethlehem terrorists. At
precisely the same time, the rector of London’s St. James’s Church, was
organizing, at her church, a propaganda event called “Bethlehem Unwrapped.” In a Guardian newspaper article, said she was
supporting a “beautiful resistance.” There was nothing “beautiful” in the
blowingup of the bus near Tel Aviv that these
Bethlelem-based Islamic terrorists attacked. Neither should churches be
supporting such “resistance,” known to Israelis as terror attacks. This
though is the campaign and cause that people like Rector Lucy Winkett, the
British Methodists, and “Jesus at the Check Point” Christians promote,
while hiding the truth of what is actually going on here.

What is going on is that
Israelis are being targeted for slaughter, as are Christians in the Muslim
world including within the Palestinian-controlled areas. In Bethlehem, they are
being persecuted and oppressed, not by Israel but by Palestinians, including
the leadership.

Prior
to Israel’s surrender of Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat’s PLO in 1995, the
Christian population was actually growing. But today, the town of Bethlehem’s
Christians have been reduced to a mere five percent. This can hardly be blamed
on Israel, considering that the Christian population in the Jewish state
continues to flourish. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, its Christian community
has expanded more than a thousand percent.

“Christ at the
Check Point” is primarily a public relations plot to dissuade Evangelicals worldwide
from their pro-Israel views. They state this openly in their mission statement.
They wish “to create a platform for serious engagement with Christian
Zionism” in order to pull them away from their support for Israel.

Mark Tooley of Front Page magazine wrote, “To succeed,
they will have to put blinders on cooperatively gullible evangelicals, guiding
their eyes towards disruptive Israeli checkpoints, while hiding the rest of the
surrounding reality.” How right he
is. It is in the hiding that the dishonesty of these Christians can be seen. It
is this dishonest act that reveals their Anti-Semitism. It is not performed out
of ignorance. It is done knowingly, as an act of deception of yet another
Christian libel performed against the Jew, this time the nation Jew, Israel.

Participants at this event call themselves “peace
activists.” They liberally cloak themselves with a moral message of peace but
their actions concentrate on dumping down on Israel while ignoring Palestinian,
official and unofficial, oppression and threats against the remaining
Christians under their control, let alone the Jews of Israel. The aim of this
event is not peace, but division and bias against the Jewish state.

Stephen Sizer, a British
Anglican priest and a constant Israeli delegitimizer, will be a keynote speaker.
He argues that Christian Zionism has no biblical foundation. In 2004, he
adapted his PhD thesis into a book, “Christian
Zionism - Road Map to Armageddon?” He suggests that "it is
irresponsible to believe that God will bless Christians materially if they
support the largely secular State of Israel."

Some of Sizer's writings have
been commended by Christians who embrace replacement
and liberation theology. A prominent Christian opponent of Sizer,
renowned Bible teacher, David Pawson,
however, wrote a book called “Defending
Christian Zionism.” Having a dig at Sizer, Pawson said, "I am
grateful to Stephen Sizer for drawing attention to the legitimate criticisms of
dispensational Zionism. He has rendered a service to the cause of Zionism which
was needed."

If truth were told they would produce a local Christian to report on Christian
suffering under a Palestinian regime, or an IDF officer to report why there are
security check posts, or an Israeli to explain
the violently anti-Semitic denial of Jewish rights that this the root of
the Israeli-Arab, Islamic-Jewish, conflict, and the reason why check posts are
there.

There is no room for truth at “Christ at the Check Post.” It is an exercise in trickery, deception, and
replacement theology.

Barry Shaw is the author of “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative”
which includes a chapter on Replacement Theology. www.israelnarrative.com He is also the Special Consultant on
Delegitimization Issues at Netanya Academic College.